📋 SCREENSHOT

Improved area screenshots for macOS: COPY to clipboard + SAVE image file

The Issue to solve

• macOS will not allow to use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Cmd + 4 (I personally only use area-selected screenshots) to simultaneously "Copy picture to clipboard" and "Save picture to folder"
• "Folder Actions" Service solution was attempted; however, was complicated and had a seemily inevitable 3-4 second delay for the image file to become available in the clipboard, despite disabling "Show Floating Tumbnail" and other disables.
• Applescript and Automator solutions were attempted, but did not solve the clipboard availability delay.
• Services worked, seemingly only partially, no globally: system-wide, accross all apps, no matter which app/window was focussed.

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The Solution

• After investigating MANY options, the following solution involves writing a simple binary (executable bash script, without the file extension) and adding a global keyboard shortcut trigger via a third-party app... I've chosen BetterTouchTool.app for said trigger; however there are many more (see below)

Step 1

• Disable default macOS keyboard shortcuts for area screenshots:
  • disable "Save piture of selected area as a file"
  • disable "Copy picture of selected area to the clipboard"

Step 2

• Write bash file screenshot script without .sh file extension

#!/bin/bash

# ----------------------------------------------------
# MacOS ScreenCapture TWEAK !!
# Takes a screenshot to the clipboard AND saves the
# clipboard image to a file in PNG format.
# ----------------------------------------------------
# SAVE TO LOCATION: /usr/local/bin 
# make sure file is executable!
# ----------------------------------------------------

screencapture -c -i -x

destination=$HOME/Pictures/screenshots

# MacOS DEFAULT FORMAT: "Screenshot 2021-03-02 at 18.49.01.png"
# filename="Screenshot $(date +%Y-%m-%d\ at\ %H.%M.%S).png";
# filename="screenshot_$(date +%Y-%m-%d)_$(date +%H\h%M\s%S).png";

filename="screenshot_$(date +%Y%m%d)_$(date +%H.%M.%S).png";

if [ $# -ne 0 ]; then
    if [[ -d $1 ]]; then
        if [ "$1" != "." ]; then folder=$1; fi
    else
        a=$(dirname "$1")    
        b=$(basename "$1" .png)
        if [ "$b" != "" ]; then filename=$b.png; fi
        if [ "$a" != "." ]; then destination=$a; fi
    fi
fi

osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to ¬
        write (the clipboard as «class PNGf») to ¬
        (make new file at folder \"$destination\" ¬
        with properties {name:\"$filename\"})";

• optional customisations:
  • Give the script file any semantic name you wish
  • the screencapture -x flag turns off the shutter sound effect
  • destination variable for folder location of saved image file.
  • filename naming convention with (or without) date and date format

Step 3

• Make script executable: $ chmod +x sreenshot

Step 4

• Assign the keyboard shortcut Shift + Cmd + 4 (or, whatever your preference) to run the binary globally
• I am using third-party app BetterTouchTool (other options listed below) to apply the shortcut to the binary
• It appears BetterTouchTool allows pasting the contents of the script directly, instead of referencing an external file.
• I prefer to have the script in an actual file, which i have place at path: /usr/local/bin which allows to skip a further step of adding to $PATH

🏁 Done

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Alternative applications to assign shortcuts for running scripts:

• Alfred
• Apptivate
• BetterTouchTool
• Butler
• Cockpit
• Controller Mate
• iKey
• Keyboard Maestro
• NuKit (only AppleScript)
• QuicKeys
• Quicksilver
• Shortcuts (only AppleScript)
• Spark
• ThisService

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Authored by Justin Rankin github.com/finografic | [email protected]